It’s a busy day for Apple today. Not only has the company launched its iCloud service for everyone, they also released Mac OS X 10.7.2. To top it all off, as expected, the company launched iOS 5.0 today, bringing a host of much-needed and long-awaited new features to iOS.
I don’t think there’s any reason at this point to dive into iOS 5’s new features too much. To me, the most important feature there is still a proper notification system. They copied it 1:1 from Android, and that’s a good thing – it works, so why come up with something that doesn’t, right? My iPad 2 updated just fine, but due to a hard drive crash and thus a Windows re-install, iTunes kept whining about this computer not being the sync partner or whatever nonsense – which you still can’t easily fix. I have an evening of re-sorting my applications ahead of me. Oh the joy.
Moving on, Mac OS X 10.7.2 makes Mac OS X ready for iCloud, but on top of that, also includes a number of other fixes and improvements. Most notably, it comes with Safari 5.1.1. These two additions should please a few among you: “allow reordering of desktop spaces and full screen apps in Mission Control” and “enable dragging files between desktop spaces and full screen apps”.
Apple also finally stopped drinking and removed disk image (.dmg) and installer packages (.pkg) files from the list of safe file types. Stunning it took them this long.
In any case, you know the drill – Software Update and iTunes it up.
Windows re install ? Ouch. Although I assume you mean a system restore from an external backup, which doesn’t take that long and is less painful.
The notifications are the most welcome change but a very significant one is iMessage. Yes Skype et al do the same thing but they’re not as integrated. Nice jab at the carriers.
In France, unlimited data plans always come with unlimited texts, and it is cheaper to get unlimited texts alone. It seems to me that this severely reduces the usefulness of the iMessage feature, as texts work with phones from all manufacturers, work in areas where data doesn’t, and are more power-efficient because your phone has to keep a GSM/CDMA connection alive anyway so they come for “free”. Is the situation different where you live ?
Edited 2011-10-12 19:07 UTC
Oh man, just had to quote this… too funny 🙂
Edited 2011-10-12 19:23 UTC
If I did not make this clear enough, I was talking about unlimited texts
Edited 2011-10-12 19:33 UTC
I think you were clear. I think he was being sarcastic because we no competition in the US.
Here in Spain carriers only gives us unlimited headaches.
It is a general solution for apple device users, not just iPhone. I am not surprised that Mac OS X will get text message eventually, and iPod touch, and iPad. just like FaceTime.
Admittedly, I don’t quite find it useful yet, simply because most of the ones that I want to talk to does not have an apple device.
Would’ve been kinda nice if they had built it atop of something open, such as Jabber/XMPP… but knowing Apple, let me guess – it’s their own entirely proprietary protocol?
I laughed when I saw the iText feature being advertised with “now you can see if people have read your message!” – yeah, because SMS hasn’t supported delivery reports for… like, forever.
In the US we totally pay through the nose for text messages. I pay USD 25 a month for an unlimited text plan for the family. Using iMessage I can go down to a basic plan which costs only USD 10 so this one app would be a huge savings.
(Needless to say, this only applies if your family members all have an iPhone which is probably the whole reason for this app, to lock in the whole family into iThings.)
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And this $10/month basic plan already includes unlimited data ? Now THAT is incredibly cheap by my French standards
(basic plans are things like 30 min talk that you can sometimes convert to 100 sms here) Indeed, it would make iMessage (or competing solutions such as Skype, WLM… for that matter) an interesting option for US citizens.
Edited 2011-10-13 05:46 UTC
As if the unremovable Apple crapware wasn’t enough in iOS, the new Newsstand application can’t even be tucked away in a folder! Wtf?!
OS5 accelerates old phones as well =)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4951/iphone-4s-preliminary-benchmarks…
Apple should be sued by someone because of that… I am pretty sure there is some patent somewhere in the world just for that.